Lord Cormack: My Lords, it is a pleasure and honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, who was the first occupant of the Woolsack when we decided to have a Lord Speaker in your Lordships’ House. She made some incredibly important points. I was sorry we missed part of her peroration; that is a good reason for being in the Chamber rather than Zooming in. I also thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, spoke very movingly and sensitively about those like her who are shielded. She graphically illustrated what a confusing situation we face at the moment.
The noble Baroness referred to the 75-page document we have. Just before I left my office, there came up on the computer a list of things we should do—including read a 79-page description of the 75-page document. It also contained some rather interesting information. It told us who are here that we should not use the restaurants in the House of Lords, where the staff are working so very hard to ensure that we are given sustenance. It also told me that, living in London in tier 2, I can do various things; I can go to a gym—I do not normally—I can go to shops, I can get a tattoo—I do not want one of those—and I can stay in the pub until 11 pm so that I can leave in a staggered way.
That is all from the guidance that came via Conservative Central Office, which also made the point that the Labour Party was playing politics. That is a puerile and stupid accusation. I do not believe the Opposition are playing politics; if the Government think that, the best thing to do is to invite to a COBRA-style regular meeting the leader of the Opposition and the admirable John Ashworth, who has been a very good shadow Secretary of State.
It is exceptionally confusing. I can do all those things in London. I can summon a mechanic if some appliance goes wrong in my flat but I cannot allow either of my sons—one of whom lives in London—to enter it. When I go back to Lincoln, where we are in tier 3, I will be able to. I am delighted and grateful for that. I can now go to the cathedral for services, but there are many other things I cannot do. I can go to a pub only for a takeaway. My son who lives in London will be breaking the law if he delivers Christmas presents to our home in Lincoln on 18 December, but on 22 December he can descend with his whole family for five days.
There is confusion worse confounded wherever you look. It is time the Government trusted the people by giving clear and simple advice. I called for clarity and simplicity four weeks ago as we entered this second lockdown, but we have not had it. We need not the vast number of pages that I and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, referred to but simple, clear guidance. If the guidance is that it is rather unwise for people to mix together as we normally do at Christmas, then say so clearly and sensibly and trust the people. That is a slogan our party used to have; I do not know what has happened to it.
We are now, as I have said before, living in a benign police state. Indeed, it is not all that benign when the police can issue fines for £10,000 without anybody being on trial. That is, frankly, disgraceful. The police could go into homes—I am sure they will have the good sense not to—and separate families until 22 December and then again on 28 December. We must have clear, simple, unambiguous guidance. Libby Purves wrote a good piece in the Times yesterday in which she said that
“99 per cent of us may not let a friend, relative or neighbour cross our threshold”,
apart from during those five days. It is more than sad—it is tragic—that we have come to this pass.
The Government take our most basic freedoms and demand trust, but they offer none in return. That is why I have tabled a regret Motion calling attention to the contrasts, the lack of simplicity and the lack of clarity. I shall listen to what the Minister says before I decide whether I move that or not, but, frankly, this will not do.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins of Tavistock, with her nursing expertise and her kind reference to my regret amendment on the Order Paper.  This is concerned with SI 1374, which imposes restrictions on gatherings and businesses in England in tiers 1 to 3. I have an interest, living in Wiltshire and working in London, both of which should probably not be in tier 2 at all.
However, my main interest and the focus of my amendment is in cost-benefit analysis as a powerful driver of good public policy. I first learnt of its merits while at university, studying the case for the Victoria line, which turned out to be so much more beneficial than we expected. I am dismayed that the regulations did not include a regulatory impact assessment outlining, as a minimum, the economic impact of each of the tiers and hence explaining the choices that the Government are proposing. This is apparently because they are “temporary measures”. This is a disappointing claim. Inaction on such grounds may have been just about excusable in March, but not now. Worse, the analysis belatedly published yesterday of the health, economic and social effects of Covid-19 and the approach to tiering barely helps at all. A proper cost-benefit analysis—impact assessment, call it what you will—should be guiding the Government’s decisions and should not be cobbled together to placate Parliament after the event.
All policy decisions in government need to be informed by an analysis of the costs and benefits, which necessarily involves giving both numerical values. Sometimes this is a challenge, but with ingenuity we can ascribe values or a range of values to outcomes based on real-life analogy or widely accepted decisions. We need to measure not only the immediate, first-level effects, but those of a second order. To give an example, if hospital appointments are cancelled because of our Covid policy, we know that there will be problems, including extra deaths from diseases such as cancer and heart disease. This needs to be quantified. The responsible approach is not to ignore or downplay such inevitable consequences of our policy, but to put the costs into the equation.
Although the Government have not produced a proper analysis of the costs and benefits of their policy, others—distinguished others—have done so. I refer to the paper of August 2020 by Miles, Stedman and Heald. I shall summarise and simplify: they find that the costs of the Government’s policy on lockdown 1 probably amount to between three and 10 times the value of the benefits. Does that not give us some cause to reflect?
One problem is that the Government have not even claimed to seek the optimum overall outcome. Instead they have, from the start, been fixated on Covid only—the illnesses and deaths it causes, and the impact on bed capacity in the NHS. Of course analysis of the kind I advocate is difficult, but those of us in business or involved in regulation know that it is always worth making estimates and perhaps giving ranges, as the ONS has done for the economy. Its work is summarised in section 7 of the government analysis. It is terrifying: we are looking forward to, at best, flat output by 2025-26 and, at worst, minus 6% compared to the outlook in March. The adverse effects include the destruction of capital and knowledge from business failure, loss of human capital from unemployment and so on.
Take restaurants and pubs: they have invested hugely to allow groups of people to dine together, with social distancing, ventilation and contact tracing, yet a cost-benefit analysis appears not to have been done weighing the slight increase in infection in tiers 2 and 3 against the risk of their financial failure. In that case, the response to criticism has been to promise the businesses more money, but that could be a road to fiscal ruin.
The next category of loss is health outcomes, addressed in part 5 of the analysis. There is much talk of the health system being overwhelmed over the winter but, if true, why have hospitals not been preparing for this since April, building extra capacity, taking on extra staff—as promised in our manifesto—and serving as a beacon of good practice?
We also need to look at the social effects of Covid policy. There have been some positives in the Government’s approach, such as bubbles for single relatives and the continuation of schools and childcare, which the Minister rightly emphasised. But the list of negatives, all of which need to be costed, gets longer: care home rules leaving desperate children unable to connect with their parents; partners of pregnant women banned from scans; grandparents unable to see their children and grandchildren; the bankrupting of small businessmen in their 50s who are unlikely ever to get work elsewhere; and the special problems for the disabled, as was explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.
Finally, we need to consider the money that has been misspent and add that. Top of my list is test, track and trace, and that is £22 billion according to the Treasury spending review and another £15 billion next year. The Government should reflect on the fact that a loyal and committed supporter of theirs is so disappointed in their policies on this vital matter of proper cost-benefit analysis. It is my present intention to divide the House on an amendment with which I think that a majority of the House will privately agree.